Rashel murmured from far away, “She told me you had a decision to make and that the Life Giver could help. She said you would have to leave me to seek your Lady. And that either way I would not be safe here. If you leave, the people would think…that they could do what Norton presumed. And you will have to leave. You’ve killed the brute, and the villagers will demand justice and you will be hung. And Nevai? Traveling in a magician’s wake is no way to grow up, but neither is starving to death with me.”
Yeolani found himself shaking his head in denial before he could reject that future. “It will not happen that way,” he intoned. “I swear that will not happen to him.”
Rashel’s eyes blurred with tears, or so she thought. Then she eased back and looked at Yeolani. She recognized his very appea
